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A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers,
looks around for a coffin.
- H. L. Mencken
Related topics: Cynical
I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie.
I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.
- H.L. Mencken
We must respect the other fellow's religion,
but only in the sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory that
his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
- H. L. Mencken
Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age.
- H. L. Mencken
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person
to reconcile himself to the idea that
after all God will not help him
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
- H. L. Mencken
Marriage is a wonderful institution,
but who would want to live in an institution?
- H. L. Mencken
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- H. L. Mencken
For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief
in the occurrence of the improbable.
- H. L. Mencken
For centuries, theologians have been explaining
the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
- H. L. Mencken
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
- H. L. Mencken
Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband
a month before she marries him
and what she thinks of him a year afterward,
and you will have the truth about him.
- H. L. Mencken
Morality is the theory that every human act
must be either right or wrong,
and that 99 % of them are wrong.
- H. L. Mencken
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken
Puritanism. The haunting fear that
someone, somewhere, may be happy.
- H. L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed
(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,
all of them imaginary.
- H. L. Mencken
The believing mind is eternally impervious to evidence.
- H. L. Mencken
The worst government is often the most moral.
One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane.
But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
- H. L. Mencken
The objection to Puritans is not that
they try to make us think as they do,
but that they try to make us do as they think.
- H. L. Mencken
Life is a constant oscillation
between the sharp horns of dilemmas.
- H. L. Mencken
The urge to save humanity is almost always
a false front for the urge to rule.
- H. L. Mencken
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
- H. L. Mencken
Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.
- H. L. Mencken
The believer's ray of light is the cynic's sunburn.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything
and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde
Talent is God-given; be humble.
Fame is man-given; be thankful.
Conceit is self-given; be careful.
- John Wooden
Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore
No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.
- Anonymous (often attributed to Abraham Lincoln)
All things share the same breath -
the beast, the tree, the man...
the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.
- Chief Seattle (attributed)
Two things a man should never be angry at:
what he can help,
and what he cannot help.
- Thomas Fuller
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
Adventure is not outside man; it is within.
- George Eliot
If a man is called to be a street sweeper,
he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted,
or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry.
He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts
of heaven and earth will pause to say,
here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:
"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"
But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:
"If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
- Benjamin Franklin
The wise man in the storm prays God,
not for safety from danger,
but for deliverance from fear.
It is the storm within which endangers him,
not the storm without.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The full measure of a man is
not to be found in the man himself,
but in the colors and textures that
come alive in others because of him.
- Albert Schweitzer
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Circumstance does not make the man: it reveals him to himself.
- James Allen
The wise man does not lay up his own treasures.
The more he gives to others, the more he has for his own.
- Lao Tzu
What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman
in the midst of this world,
where each person is clinging to his piece of debris?
What's the proper salutation between people
as they pass each other in this flood?
- The Buddha
A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile
Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.
- Mark Twain
Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him,
that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men,
and when he devotes himself helpfully
to all life that is in need of help.
- Albert Schweitzer
Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be,
at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
A man too busy to take care of his health is like
a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools.
- Spanish Proverb
Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty;
it is its own reward.
Everything else is in God's hands.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi
Early to bed and early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin
The fear of death follows from the fear of life.
A man who lives fully, is prepared to die at any time.
- Mark Twain
A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson
The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
- B. C. Forbes
Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head,
and knows not that it brings abundance
to drive away the hunger.
- Saint Basil
Revenge... is like a rolling stone,
which, when a man hath forced up a hill,
will return upon him with a greater violence,
and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.
- Albert Schweitzer
Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
- Albert Schweitzer
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear,
but the triumph over it.
The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid,
but he who conquers that fear.
- Nelson Mandela
Man plans, God laughs
- Yiddish Proverb
He is a man of courage who does not run away,
but remains at his post and fights against the enemy.
- Socrates
Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?
- Luciano Pavarotti
You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers.
You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
- Naguib Mahfouz
It doesn't matter how long my hair is
or what color my skin is
or whether I'm a woman or a man.
- John Lennon
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
- Anonymous
Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
A man should do his job so well that the living,
the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The man who promises everything, is sure to fulfill nothing,
and everyone who promises too much is in danger of
using evil means in order to carry out his promises,
and is already on the road to perdition.
- Carl Jung
If you talk to a man in a language he understands,
that goes to his head.
If you talk to him in his language,
that goes to his heart.
- Nelson Mandela
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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